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Article

Steven A. Riess

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:

1999

Published online:

02 December 1999

Belmont, August, II (18 February 1853–10 December 1924), financier and sportsman, was born in New York City, the son of August Belmont, a banker, and Caroline Slidell Perry. Belmont graduated from Harvard in 1874 (A.B.) and joined the international banking house of August Belmont & Co. in 1875. Within eight years he was running its daily affairs and had modernized operations. He became head of the firm in 1890, following his father’s death. His biggest projects included a $63 million loan floated with financier ...

Article

Irving Katz

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:

1999

Published online:

02 December 1999

Belmont, August (08 December 1813–24 November 1890), financier, politician, and sportsman, was born in Alzey, a German Rhineland village, the son of Simon Belmont, a moneylender and landowner, and Frederika Elsass. He attended a Jewish school, the Philanthropin, in Frankfurt and in 1828 began work as an office boy for the local branch of the Rothschild banking family, to which he was distantly related through marriage. He was soon promoted to confidential clerk and in 1837 was sent to Cuba to investigate that Spanish colony’s stability. A stopover in New York changed the course of his life. The panic of 1837 had just struck, and the Rothschilds’ New York agent had declared bankruptcy. Belmont decided to stay and established August Belmont and Company, a private banking firm that would maintain a close, long-term working relationship with the Rothschilds. Belmont’s rise on Wall Street was rapid. He profited from foreign exchange transactions; commercial and private loans; corporate, real estate, and railroad investments; and as a U.S. government fiscal agent during the Mexican War. In 1849 he married Caroline Slidell Perry, with whom he had six children....

Article

Patrick J. Furlong

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:

1999

Published online:

02 December 1999

Haggin, James Ben Ali (09 December 1822–12 September 1914), mine owner, land developer, and horseman, was born in Harrodsburg, Kentucky, the son of Terah Temple Haggin, a lawyer and farmer, and Adeline Ben Ali, a schoolteacher. Haggin’s mother was said to have been the daughter of Ibrahim Ben Ali, an exiled Turkish army officer who settled in England and then moved to Philadelphia in the mid-1790s. Ben Ali’s residence in England is well attested, but there is no record that he ever lived in Philadelphia, where he supposedly settled and practiced medicine. Haggin may not have descended from a Turk, but he gloried in the name Ben Ali....

Article

John M. Carroll

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:

1999

Published online:

02 December 1999

Oliphant, Elmer Quillen (09 July 1892–03 July 1975), college athlete, professional football player, and administrator, was born in Bloomfield, Indiana, the son of Marion Ellsworth Oliphant, a businessman, and Alice Quillen. At age nine he moved with his family to Washington, Indiana, and attended Washington High School for three years. After his father was swindled out of a large sum of money by his partner in the lumber business, Oliphant transferred to Linton High School in Linton, Indiana, so he could work in his father’s coal mine and help pay the family’s expenses. He was an all-state end in football at Linton and an outstanding runner on the track team. Oliphant graduated in 1910 and enrolled at Purdue University....

Article

Mark H. Haller

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:

1999

Published online:

02 December 1999

Rothstein, Arnold (1882–06 November 1928), prominent gambling entrepreneur and the suspected fixer of the 1919 World Series, was born in New York City, the son of Abraham Rothstein and Esther Kahn. The father was a successful businessman in various phases of the garment industry, and both parents were observant Jews, greatly respected within the Jewish community of the city. Unlike his siblings, Rothstein was a rebellious youth who disdained school, and he was fascinated by the excitement and gambling that he found in the street life of the city. By his mid-teens he was a pool shark and was running his own dice games. He left home at age seventeen and worked briefly as a traveling salesman, but by the time he was twenty he was building the career that would lead him to a central role as the major intermediary between the underworld and upper world of New York....

Article

John F. Stover

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:

1999

Published online:

02 December 1999

Vanderbilt, William Kissam (12 December 1849–22 July 1920), railroad capitalist and sportsman, was born on a farm near New Dorp, Staten Island, New York, the son of William Henry Vanderbilt and Maria Louisa Kissam. He was the grandson of “Commodore” Cornelius Vanderbilt. William studied with private tutors and later attended a school in Geneva, Switzerland. At nineteen he was sent to work in New York City as a clerk and bookkeeper under Charles C. Clarke, the treasurer of the Hudson River Railroad, a line his grandfather had controlled since 1865. The Commodore believed that only hard work would keep his grandsons from becoming spoiled. William worked his way up various clerical grades in Clarke’s office....

Article

Susan Hamburger

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:

1999

Published online:

02 December 1999

Whitney, Harry Payne (29 April 1872–26 October 1930), financier and sportsman, was born in New York City, the son of William Collins Whitney, a lawyer and financier, and Flora Payne. As the first son of wealthy parents, Whitney attended the Groton School and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Yale University in 1894. He studied law at Columbia University in 1895 and 1896, as well as under ...

Article

Susan Hamburger

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:

1999

Published online:

02 December 1999

Whitney, John Hay (17 August 1904–08 February 1982), financier, philanthropist, and sportsman, was born in Ellsworth, Maine, the son of Payne Whitney, a capitalist and philanthropist, and Helen Hay Whitney, at the time a poet. “Jock” Whitney graduated from Yale in 1926 and studied history and literature at Oxford for one year. His father’s death in 1927 brought him home to assume control over the Whitney business interests in oil, tobacco, street railways, and real estate, worth cumulatively almost $179 million....

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